Suddenly, the boy in my arms was a very real, very fleeting thing. I couldn’t save him. Not without killing myself. But if he was next, if I could save him . . .
“You’re not next,” I said. Was I trying to comfort him, or me? “There’s nothing sinister going on and you know that. You’re just stressed with your thesis and tired and this is all compounding. You’re going to be okay.”
“But what if I’m not?”
“Ethan,” I said levelly, “you’re going to be fine. I promise. You’re going to graduate with flying colors and get into college with Oliver and me and we’re going to grow old and get a mansion with separate wings and die in our rocking chairs, just like we planned.”
He chuckled silently. “I don’t remember planning any of that.”
“I took liberties.”
As always, comforting him was easier than comforting myself. Especially because I knew I was lying through my teeth.
“It’s always before a thesis,” he said. He leaned back from my hug and looked at me with reddened eyes. “The deaths. Always the night a thesis goes up. And mine goes up next week.”
“You’re not going to die.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” I said. “You’re not allowed to die. I won’t let you.”
He took a breath to compose himself and looked back to his painting.
“You make it sound like you have some sort of sway with the reaper there.”
I looked out the window, to where more crows were gathering.
“Maybe I do,” I muttered.
? ? ?
Ethan and the rest were going off campus to grab food before the movie, which meant I was left to my own devices after our time in the studio together. I’d finished most of the still life, but really, what did it matter anymore? Hell, I couldn’t even be too worried about my thesis response tomorrow. It seemed like every moment that passed, my chances of making it through Islington grew smaller. I couldn’t even say I was freaking out about it—it seemed inevitable, and I felt resigned. After all, I’d been living on borrowed time. At least this way, hopefully, I could make my life mean something.
I sat at dinner on my own, in a far corner of the cafeteria, vainly picking at my salad (Chinese night again, which pretty much meant everything was inedible) and staring out the window. The sky was already black as night, lit by a few lamps in the distance. It felt like the first night in ages where it wasn’t snowing, yet the lights were constantly twinkling and shifting, thanks to the crows that darted in and out of the shadows. It made my appetite dwindle even more effectively than the scent of bad stir-fry and moist eggrolls.
What was weird was the dichotomy of it all. The cafeteria was warm and muggy and homey. It should have been welcoming. The occasional laughter and constant drone of conversation should have made me feel like I was part of something. I was an artist at Islington Arts Academy. I was on the road to self-discovery, to becoming a better artist. But as I sat there by the windows, watching the crows, I realized I was none of that. I wasn’t a normal teenager. I wasn’t even an abnormal teenage artist. I was something else entirely, and I couldn’t fit in here if I tried.
It reminded me way too much of how I’d felt back at home, even before Brad entered my life—the days sitting in the lunchroom on my own, the nights doing homework in silence. My heart twisted like a rusted cog, shredding my lungs and making it hard to breathe. Maybe I hadn’t escaped my past after all. Maybe I hadn’t changed. Maybe I was still the loner girl who couldn’t really fit in.
I shook my head and forced myself to standing. I was just tired. Stressed. And it had been a long, long time since I’d had a meal without Ethan or Oliver to keep me company.
Another twist in my chest. If Ethan was hurt next . . .
I quickly bused my tray and hurried out into the cold before the warmth could suffocate me.
Jonathan’s tutorial was meeting after dinner, I knew that much. But I didn’t head toward the academics concourse right away. I couldn’t get the image of Ethan sprawled in a circle from my head. I turned instead and walked down toward the lake, following the snow-dusted, lamplit trail through the woods. No one was out here. The trees rose silent and white all around me, boughs heavy with snow and silent crows. Chills raced up and down my arms as I crept deeper and deeper into the woods, trying to keep to the path and feeling with every step like I was about to fall into a horror movie. One where the girl gets her eyes gouged out by crows and then haunts the woods for eternity.
I didn’t stop walking until I neared the lake. A few evening fishermen were out there, their huts glowing like yurts in a snow-swept mountain pass, all of them completely oblivious to the darkness gathering around them. It should have felt like I wasn’t alone, like there were still people out there living normal lives, people I could connect with or emulate. But here, on the shore, I was alone. Alone, save for the crows.
But they were the ones I was out here to find.